What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. was born in Oregon in 1938 and died 50 years later in Washington. He is best known as a short story writer, although he also wrote prose and poetry. After marrying young and having a daughter, Carver took a creative writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner at Chico State College, now known as California State University. Gardner, best known for writing Grendel, a 1971 retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view, was a huge influence on Carver. Gardner taught him the importance of authenticity in writing, with Carver later claiming:

[I]f the words and the sentiments were dishonest, the author was faking it, writing about things he didn’t care about or believe in, then nobody could ever care anything about it (Carver, Raymond, Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose, 2001, p. 113).

In 1961, Carver published his first short story, “The Furious Seasons,” which owed more to American writer William Faulkner than to the later pared-back style with which he is best well-known. He received his BA in General Studies from Humboldt Stage College, California. He failed to complete an MA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and falsely claimed he successfully completed an MFA here. While holding a variety of low-paying jobs, Carver continued to write and publish short stories and poetry, some of which appeared in distinguished magazines like Esquire and The New Yorker. In 1967, he published his first book of poetry, Near Klamath. His story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” was published in Martha Foley’s annual The Best American Short Stories anthology. Critics took notice, seeing a writer who gave voice to the disenfranchised middle classes and blue-collar workers in America of the 1970s and 1980s.

Toward the end of the 1960s, Carver met Gordon Lish, who would go on to become his editor at the publishing house, Albert A. Knopf, and help create a particular “Carver” style. This was evident in the anthologies Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981). As Carver moved away from the influence of Lish, as seen in Cathedral (1983), his work trended toward a less pessimistic and more lyrical style. A final collection of short stories, Where I’m Calling From, appeared in 1988, and American writer John Updike selected the titular story for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century.

Carver had an alcohol addiction and said he “gave up” writing and “took to full-time drinking.” Nevertheless, he continued to produce well-received work and teach creative writing at various universities. His work has been hugely influential and is especially popular in creative writing courses. Carver has also been credited with reviving the fortunes of the short story form, which previously fell out of favor in America. He has influenced writers as diverse as Jay McInerney, Haruki Murakami, and Chuck Kinder, and in 1993, Robert Altman based his movie Short Cuts on nine short stories and a poem by the author. Carver received two acclaimed nominations: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? for the National Book Awards in 1977 and Cathedral for a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Carver was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1988, the year of his death.